


Work Song

by itsfnickingawesomeness



Series: Inspired [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Hozier, M/M, Work Song, basically just an excuse for me to listen to this song even more, some non-specific descriptions of violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-02
Updated: 2016-08-02
Packaged: 2018-07-28 20:06:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7654882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itsfnickingawesomeness/pseuds/itsfnickingawesomeness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My babe would never fret none, about what my hands and my body done.<br/>If the lord don't forgive me, I'd still have my baby and my babe would have me.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Work Song

They called it the Winter Solider. The Asset. A weapon. A ghost story, credited with over two dozen assassinations (uncredited for upwards of a hundred).

 

 _He_ called him Bucky. Buck. James Buchanan Barnes. He’s a soldier, an American POW, credited with countless kills against Hydra and the Nazis during World War II (or so says the museum).

 

The Asset- an identity born through countless years of pain and training and discipline. The very same identity that was shattered in an instant by the identity of _Bucky_ , by a handful of words, reducing the assassin to a glitching and hostile mess. The Asset had resented that, _hated_ it, and had struck again and again and _again_ , trying to make the words go away, trying to make the sharp pain in its mind _stop_ , if the man could just _die_ -

 

_‘Til the end of the line_

Those words- six seemingly insignificant words- had snapped something bright and sharp and so uncomfortably warm (after 70 years of nothing but ice within anything new seemed to burn hotter than the sun) inside of the Asset. It was terrifying and confusing, so unknown yet so familiar, calling to his shattered psyche yet repelling so strongly everything that had been ground into his body. So, after rescuing the infuriating and despicable and somehow beautiful man from the water, the Asset _ran_.

 

It- he- _it_ \- wandered. Stole. Broke into safe houses, ransacking the empty ones and destroying the active ones. Memories resurfaced, sometimes in clips and sounds, other times in barrages. Good, bad, horrific- it never mattered, they slammed back into the mind with the force of a train ( _cold air rushing by the sound of metal screeching and someone screaming his_ name-) ( _the same voice whispering ‘_ Bucky’ _so reverently and gently, two syllables aching with the weight of such love-)._ They left it- _him_ shaking, gasping for air, and tears drying on his cheeks, both from terror and pure joy.

 

He drifted like this for months: mission-less, lost, suspicious of everyone around him, terrified of his own mind and body. The ghost of a blonde- small, angry, yet constantly worrying over him- haunted his every step, urging him on to some unforeseen goal, some _raison d’être_ that Bucky could not yet comprehend. It felt like an itch, a whisper of thought at the edge of his conscious, this pulsing spot of warmth in his breast that he couldn’t quite fathom. But it was enough to get him by, to drive him forward and find a reason to continue.

 

And so he turned his attention to the remaining branches of Hydra that he knew were still operating, spreading their poison further into this world. In their disposal, he was ruthless. He was every inch the trained weapon into which they had molded him.

 

No- not molded. Beaten, broken, erased, parts cut away until there was not enough left of James Buchanan Barnes to fight back.

 

He found, surprisingly, that he could, in fact, still feel joy. As he watched technicians and scientists and thugs alike screaming in primal fear, running away from the nightmare that they themselves had created, Bucky could not help but feel vindictive pleasure, a warmth spreading through his veins, a heated sense of righteousness that one could only alike to the soft yet sharp heat of embers.

 

Bucky _played_ with these monsters (because, truly, _they_ were the monsters, he was trying to force himself to understand the distinction). First, the lights went out, plunging the compound into darkness. Red emergency lights blinked, offering a hellish glaze to the sight. In between flashes and sparks, the ghost would appear in a doorway, as silent as ever. As soon as the screaming started, a predatory grin from the monster shut them up again, and Bucky took pleasure in knowing the last thing these scum ever saw was his toothy, never-looked-quite-right grin.

 

The results were bloody, always.

 

Guns, while useful, were too quick. It would be over too quickly, even if someone bled out from a gut shot. So, Bucky brought his knives and a baseball bat. Knives flew into hands and feet, pinning those who were foolish enough to try to escape. Then began the baseball game- his aluminum bat swinging back and forth, sometimes into equipment, sometimes into heads. Machinery and brains alike splattered the room, until Bucky was covered in viscera and the rooms’ contents had been turned to rubble.

 

He taunted the Hydra workers, sometimes. Played with them like they had done to his mind, taking bits and pieces off as they screamed, stabbing and slashing and hissing vitriol at them. Their terror made him grin, as he took revenge for seventy years of stolen and mutilated life, making each person he encountered suffer a fraction of what he had.

 

(Sometimes, after, as he was cleaning blood and brain matter out of his hair, his right hand would tremble, his left arm would shift restlessly, his eyes would twitch and his stomach would rebel. His mind supplied images in white hot flashes- pain and bodily fluids and screams and lightning- and Bucky would collapse and shake apart at the seams. But this was necessary. It was what he was made to do. It was all he _could_ so. He had to do it. For _him_. Bucky held that softly glowing image of a small blonde first and foremost in his mind, willing himself to soldier on and not fall back into the darkest recesses of the Asset.

 

It was enough.)

 

Seeing Chairs was the worst. It would inevitably result in minutes of panic, of ghost-lightning streaking through him, limbs locked and shaking, brain reduced to repetitive chaos and screams. Fighting his way back to the present took effort and time, which he did not have. Several times this resulted in him being apprehended yet again. It was never pleasant. The record time they managed to subdue him was for one week, four days, ten hours, and 37 minutes. Not long enough to wipe him again (and he had the base instinct still to thank _something_ that it hadn’t happened again, how many times could one person be erased and burned away and scoured from-), but long enough to cause serious detriment to his person. After those missions, he had to limp back to his base, bloody and weak, phantom panic seizing his lungs and shuddering his bones.

 

Each time, he had to grit his teeth and bear it. He couldn’t break- not again- he had given up on Steve once- he had to soldier on, escape, and raise Hell once more. It was all that he knew, all that he was good at, all that he _had_. And Bucky Barnes, though he seemed like a distant memory at best, would always do what he could for Steve Rogers.

 

And eventually, after more months of slaughter and piecing back together the shattered parts of a human being, Bucky finally ( _finally)_ followed the insistent tugging in his chest, the singular bead of warmth that called him home.

_‘~*~’_

  
The figure in the doorway was completely still, not a sound coming from the dark silhouette. Steve froze in bed. He knew that figure, better than he knew his own. The two were silent, not daring to cross the space between them. The silence seemed to stretch on and on, neither knowing how to break it. Or both too scared to. Steve shifted slightly on the mattress, carefully lifting one side of the covers- an open invitation, the distance between them a chasm, Steve asking Bucky to jump across as Steve once did for him.   
  
In the next moment, Bucky was sliding between the cool sheets, pressing his body alongside Steve's, limbs fitting into remembered niches like it had only been days since they last touched like this, not decades. Carefully, hesitantly, like he was afraid Bucky would disappear if he moved too fast, Steve brought his arms around Bucky, wrapping one around his waist, using the other to press a head full of long brown hair into his chest. The two still didn’t speak, but their bodies seemed to unconsciously relax into one another, the closeness that much sweeter after being separated for so very, very long.

 

It was later- seconds, minutes, hours, neither knew- that Bucky finally spoke. His voice was hoarse from disuse, but a Brooklyn twang could still be heard under that same, smooth timbre to which Steve had fallen asleep for years. “I don’t deserve this. You know that.” The tone of his voice was flat, strained, holding back something that was threatening to spill forth.

 

Rather than expound upon the immediate refusals that came to his mind, Steve took a breath, searching for non-existent words to express how _wrong_ he was. “Buck… you deserve it more than anyone I’ve ever met.” He spoke over the argumentative intake of breath from beneath him. “If anything, _I_ don’t deserve this.” That seems to stun Bucky into silence, so Steve took another breath, prepared to do whatever it took to keep this man here, to not fail him again.

 

“I never went back to look for you. If I had, I could’ve found you, and none of this would have happened. We could have grown old together, moved into a large house… gotten a dog. But I fell into my rage, and my grief… and I let you down. I took the easy, “heroic” way out, just so that I didn’t have to face my failure. I’ll never forgive myself, but I need you to know that I am so _god_ damn sorry.” Steve had more to say, but a roaring, choking sensation took hold of his throat. He swallowed, blinking his eyes quickly, fingers tightening slightly on the precious bulk in his arms.

 

Bucky took the momentary silence to speak again. As the words slipped out unbidden from his lips, his right arm traced patterns down Steve’s ribs, his deepest muscle memory spurring him on to some impulse that had been burned out long ago. “I… I don’t remember much from. From before. I remember… waiting for you, knowing that you would come to save me.” At that Steve flinched violently, a wounded sound tearing from his throat. “Shh. I know now… I know what happened. They told m- they said that y-you had died. In a plane crash. I think… Steve, _I’m_ sorry, I gave in. I stopped fighting.”

 

All of this was said with such matter of fact conviction, as if they weren’t talking about the shattering of a soul, the burning out of a star so bright that it had rivaled the sun itself. “Bucky, I promise you, you have _nothing_ to apologize for. Ever.” Two tears had escaped Steve’s eyes, and he could feel minute trembling in his arms where they were wrapped tightly around Bucky. “This is my- I blame myself. I don’t know how to… I don’t know if I _can_ … but I-”

 

A quick squeeze came from the metal hand, light enough to be painless, firm enough to call attention. “Steve, if there is one thing that I know, it’s that I have a _lot_ to apologize for. And before you start again,” he continued, cutting across the beginning of a protest from Steve, “I know that ‘I wasn’t in control’. Doesn’t matter. It was my hands, my body that did those things. That was still doing those things until about half an hour ago. That’s not on you.” Bucky winced as his voice wavered and he licked his lips, not used to talking so much.

 

Steve had frozen at the words “was still doing”, not risking a look down to see what Bucky’s facial expression was. It felt like he was at the edge of a precipice; one more move and he would tumble down one way or another: with Bucky, or without. He wasn’t sure he could survive that fall, not again. He needed to keep Bucky here, just long enough to convince him to stay for good. Steve had scorched the earth for Bucky before, and he would gladly do it over and over again.

 

But he didn’t want to argue, never again. He needed Bucky like he needed air- they were counterparts, he and Bucky, and one without the other was unbalanced and _broken_. “I don’t care.” Burying his nose in Bucky’s unwashed hair- smelling of dirt and blood but something unmistakably _Bucky_ \- Steve shifted his grip so that he could bring Bucky’s face level with his. “I don’t _care_. James Buchanan Barnes, nothing you do could ever stop me from loving you.” Tears pricked at Steve’s eyes again, but he pushed them away, focusing all of his attention on the eyes that he had never thought to see again outside of his dreams. “From now, until the end of the line, you’ll have me. Whether you want me or not.” The joke fell flat under the sheer weight of emotion with which Steve had imbibed in his words, and blue eyes studied blue eyes, the ground at the precipice slowly tilting.

 

Looking wary, like he didn’t completely believe Steve, Bucky shook his head. “You’re still such a reckless punk.” he whispered, the harsh words tempered by the shaking in his voice. “Looks like I really did leave all of the stupid with you.” With that, Steve came careening down the cliff on the other side of the precipice, and his lips curled up into his first genuine smile in seventy-five years. Pulling Bucky towards him, Steve pressed their lips together, the sensation causing a tidal wave of joy and warmth and _rightness_ crashing through him. It felt like a broken part being repaired, a misaligned cog slipping into place, a missing piece of his heart returning- every cheesy analogy that flew Steve’s head seemed unworthy of this feeling, this feeling of coming _home_.

 

“God, I love you, Bucky. Always have, always will.” Steve spoke between kisses, hands now gently cradling Bucky’s face. “Whatever’s ahead, I’ll stand by you, no matter what.”

 

“Yea, I know.” Bucky replied softly. “I wouldn’t have it any other way. Whatever comes next, I trust you. The one thing that got me through was you, Steve. I’m not about to let that go. I’ll always come home to you.”

 

_In the low lamp light I was free, Heaven and Hell were words to me._

_‘~*~’_

_When my time comes around, lay me gently in the cold dark earth._

_No grave can hold my body down_

_I’ll crawl_

_home_

_to him._

 


End file.
